Michelle Obama event “creeps out” veteran reporter

Meg Kissinger, a veteran reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, was assigned to cover Michelle Obama’s speech in Milwaukee on behalf of Mary Burke, the Democratic candidate for governor of Wisconsin. As she has done for the past 35 years, Kissinger tried to talk to people in the crowd.

Assigned to cover Michelle Obama’s speech today and was told by a Mary Burke aide and one for the White House that I could not speak to the people in the crowd.

To say that I was creeped out is an understatement. This is what reporters do in America: we speak to people. At least that’s how I’ve been doing things — at all kinds of political events — since 1979.

In her story for the newspaper, Kissinger reported that, initially, there weren’t enough chairs for everyone in attendance and that an elderly woman using two canes complained that she couldn’t find a place to sit.

Is this why the Burke and Obama staffs didn’t want reporters talking to the crowd?

It doesn’t matter. This isn’t Gaza. In America, as Kissinger says, the political class has never been able to tell reporters with whom they can talk.

It is creepy, indeed, that Team Obama’s efforts to “transform” America apparently extends to limiting press access to the American public.